I see a top 2/3 spread dominating pp 50-51profiling Kate Hardcastle, the only female Director of a Super League club (Bradford Bulls).

Power to your elbow, Kate!Respect to you, and to Ashling O'Connor who wrote the piece, and to whichever editor decided it was finally time to bring The Times coverage of rugby League into the 21st century.

I hope that now, it is just possible, we may start to see an occasional spread when a player does something good.Hmmmmmmm. but that is every week of the year.Let's say, perhaps, when a player achieves something extra special?Or if not extra special then something outstanding?...... like winning the Rugby League Golden Boot, for example (as Kevin Sinfield did recently)?......or being named in the International Dream Team (several of them were, recently, but as to any kind of congratulatory coverage in The Times.

Saw this today also.. Nice to see.. but a long way to go when you take into account the five pages of union coverage in the same issue and the authors reluctance to start the article in anything other than typical fashion, with the mention of flat caps and whippets RL stereo type..

Funny how RL continues to hold this stereo type in the eyes of some of the media, but everything else to come out of the north of England doesn't.

Saw this today also.. Nice to see.. but a long way to go when you take into account the five pages of union coverage in the same issue and the authors reluctance to start the article in anything other than typical fashion, with the mention of flat caps and whippets RL stereo type..

Funny how RL continues to hold this stereo type in the eyes of some of the media, but everything else to come out of the north of England doesn't.

Just as an aside, anybody on here ever owned a flat cap and a whippet?

I'm sure the `flat cap and whippets' fixation isn't Chris Irvine's doing. It's just the usual one, of the usual bunch of, so last century, `social class' assumptions rearing its wizzened old head again.

And I'm sure that, subconsciously, these things pop out unbidden simply because they were stored in the little grey cells of a whole generation at an impressionable age, when memory `bytes' were being laid down in their millions under headings like `my years as a social activist' and `you can't keep a good class warrior down'.

But that revolution has been won. The problems facing a new generation have nothing to do with class - just income.

If there are any miles left the words `middle class', `working class', `upper class' surely they exist only in the need for historically decriptive adjectival phrases. Our parents lived with them, our grand parents were tramelled by them and my generation (though not me personally) broke them down. The next generation, sadly, forgot to remember that what was once privilege based can become so again, if you don't make a point of ensuring it remains universally accessible, but that doesn't mean we have collectively and entirely regressed 45 years. And the current generation? I suspect it will need a spirit of great collective generosity, if it is to survive and prosper without creeping embitterment at the blithe, short-sighted, profligate previous, and most generally prosperous generation the western world may ever see.

What is a whippet, by the way? I know it is something thin.

And isn't a flat cap something worn by men because keeping the head warm was still considered aviseable but hoodies had gone out of fashion with Robin? I'm sure I have seen as many old photographs with gentleman farmers, landowners or even lords of the manor sporting flat caps, out and about in the countryside, as I have seen workers scurrying to soot-caked Lancastrian cotton mills in paintings by LS Lowrie.

:-)

This just me posting, by the way. Not in any way connected to the job I do, or to the opinions of any the people at the company I work for, or to any of its publications. Probably obvious but just in case ..........

Edited by Honor James, 12 February 2013 - 11:49 AM.

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Just as an aside, anybody on here ever owned a flat cap and a whippet?

I have a flat cap, but it's a plain grey one. It's a little bit 'urban' rather than traditional. I don't really wear it much.

I also used to have a dog that we suspected might be a whippet when we rescued her. As she grew up and filled out, she looked like a staffie crossed with a greyhound. We lost her last year aged fourteen and replaced her with a lovely labradoodle.

I do feel I'm drifting a little bit - especially as I'm from the Southern half of the country anyway.

I've got a flatcap that was my dad's, with a burn mark in it from a rugby match where someone further back on the Osdal terracing was smoking !
Not restricted to the working class, as detailed above - my granddad was a doctor in Bradford for many years.

I was channel hopping and saw the briefest of moments, that was too long in itself, of whatever Gypsy trash channel 4 threw up last night and a lad of 11 or so was wearing a flat cap. Probably a Featherstone fan...

Just as an aside, anybody on here ever owned a flat cap and a whippet?

Although I was brought up in Kent and live in Sussex - I have a flat cap. I don't wear it often - but only because I've always lacked the self-confidence to wear any kind of hat. Another one of my life's little failures.

As for a whippet - no. We have a greyhound instead! She won 10 races in her prime before retiring a few miles away from her beloved race track at Brighton. She's beautiful.

I'm sure the `flat cap and whippets' fixation isn't Chris Irvine's doing. It's just the usual one, of the usual bunch of, so last century, `social class' assumptions rearing its wizzened old head again.

And I'm sure that, subconsciously, these things pop out unbidden simply because they were stored in the little grey cells of a whole generation at an impressionable age, when memory `bytes' were being laid down in their millions under headings like `my years as a social activist' and `you can't keep a good class warrior down'.

But that revolution has been won. The problems facing a new generation have nothing to do with class - just income.

If there are any miles left the words `middle class', `working class', `upper class' surely they exist only in the need for historically decriptive adjectival phrases. Our parents lived with them, our grand parents were tramelled by them and my generation (though not me personally) broke them down. The next generation, sadly, forgot to remember that what was once privilege based can become so again, if you don't make a point of ensuring it remains universally accessible, but that doesn't mean we have collectively and entirely regressed 45 years. And the current generation? I suspect it will need a spirit of great collective generosity, if it is to survive and prosper without creeping embitterment at the blithe, short-sighted, profligate previous, and most generally prosperous generation the western world may ever see.

What is a whippet, by the way? I know it is something thin.

And isn't a flat cap something worn by men because keeping the head warm was still considered aviseable but hoodies had gone out of fashion with Robin? I'm sure I have seen as many old photographs with gentleman farmers, landowners or even lords of the manor sporting flat caps, out and about in the countryside, as I have seen workers scurrying to soot-caked Lancastrian cotton mills in paintings by LS Lowrie.

:-)

This just me posting, by the way. Not in any way connected to the job I do, or to the opinions of any the people at the company I work for, or to any of its publications. Probably obvious but just in case ..........

I live in a very rich country and the socially top tier types here pay enormous sums for whippets and are very proud of their thoroughbreds. I guess the whippet is upwardly mobile as well as us humans.

They used to have whippet racing on some playing fields at Dewsbury. The whippets ran in a straight line and ran several times on the night. Before any race, the individual starting traps were moved backwards and forwards to try and ensure a close finish. Money changed hands.

I saw something while channel hopping on Countryfile the other week, it was dog racing but Spaniels and Jack Russells, etc. The dog ran and jumped over some small fences, 4 or 5 of them, for about 30m, turned around and then headed back. Once the dog had passed through the last gate on the return leg, could the owner then send another dog down to run. It was a relay and like something from school sports day. It looked jolly fun!

I saw something while channel hopping on Countryfile the other week, it was dog racing but Spaniels and Jack Russells, etc. The dog ran and jumped over some small fences, 4 or 5 of them, for about 30m, turned around and then headed back. Once the dog had passed through the last gate on the return leg, could the owner then send another dog down to run. It was a relay and like something from school sports day. It looked jolly fun!